The present invention relates to processing of digital images. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods for processing the highlights and saturated regions in a digital image to perform highlights restoration and dynamic range extension.
When one or more color channels in a pixel is close to saturation, the relative values of red, green and blue are no longer accurate. To correct the highlights and saturated regions, digital manufacturers usually apply color desaturation or neutralization. The level of such neutralization usually reduces with the increased distance of the pixel value from the saturation level to minimize the neutralization effect on non-saturated pixels. Since such correction methods affect both the color information and the dynamic range of the image, a different solution is needed.